Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Saturday will celebrate his 91st birthday with a million-dollar bash attended by thousands of faithful party supporters.
As elephants are slaughtered for the feast at a luxury hotel in Zimbabwe's famed Victoria Falls, critics are questioning the scale of the festivities, calling them "obscene" in a country where millions live in poverty.
Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980, is the world's oldest leader.
While he is hailed by many of his African peers as a liberation hero, critics say that over the following decades he turned the "breadbasket of southern Africa" into a basket case, trampling human rights, justice and democracy.
Mugabe's violent seizure of white-owned farms triggered food shortages and hyper-inflation, while Europe and the United States imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe over elections seen as rigged.
In an interview marking his birthday, Mugabe admitted he blundered by giving ill-equipped black farmers vast tracts of farmland under his controversial land reforms.
"I think the farms we gave to people are too large. They can't manage them," Mugabe said.
He also shrugged off questions over an incident earlier this month in which he missed a step and stumbled from a podium.
"I have yet to come across to a person who has not fallen. It was a slight fall, missing a step," Mugabe told state-controlled television.